A Mom Explains Why Parents Need To Unpack Their Childhoods

No matter how old we get, it seems, there’s a part of us that always feels like we’re faking adulthood. Like, excuse me: who signed off on allowing me to take care of children and pay taxes and go to work every weekday? But now and then we get glimmers of the fact that we have, indeed, grown over time. Like when you get really excited about purchasing a new appliance or your New Year’s Resolution is to make a soup from scratch every week. And TikTok creator Lisa (@itsme_lisap) has discovered another instance, looking back on your childhood as a parent.

“Truly, the hardest thing about parenting is that you look at your own childhood through the lens of a parent now as opposed to how you’ve always looked at it which was through the lens of a child,” she begins. “And children are more forgiving.

“But now that you have your own little person that you’re in charge of you look back at certain things that happened or the relationship you had or didn’t have with your family and you look at it with so much regret and anger and disbelief and confusion,” she continues. “Because you look at the little person you have and you know you would never do those things to this person because the that love you have for them is so strong and the way you prioritize them in your life is different.

“And then you have to ask yourself why you didn’t get that,” she says sadly, “and that will take years to unpack.”

While there’s nothing any of us can do to change our childhoods, she explains, it will make you a better parent to address those unpleasant or traumatic realities rather than “ forgiving, forgetting, and moving on too quickly,” especially if we hope to avoid the pitfalls of our parents.

“Because trauma has a way of rearing its ugly head when you least expect it.”

Response to the post has been primarily sympathetic.

“As a parent now, I understand how hard it is,” one commenter replied. “I see the sacrifices that were made. But I don’t understand the choices that were made.”

“I spent a few years in therapy and thought I had resolved a lot of parental issues I had,” shared another. “WRONG. When I became a mom, all these unknown and unresolved feelings I had towards my own mom erupted.”

Others, however, highlight that their own childhoods have inspired them in how they want to parent their own kids.

“Everyone is different,” one said. “My perspective is different in that I hope I can parent as well as my mom, and hope I can give my son what my [mother-in-law] didn’t give my husband.”

No parent is perfect. Certainly no mature adult can look back on their childhood and fault their parents for a lack of perfection. But there are still certain choices that, when looked at as a parent, make less sense than when we were kids and didn’t know any better. Those might just be worth unpacking, either on your own or with your parent. It’s not easy, but growth never is.